CJFS public comment to the US Commission on Civil Rights regarding their investigation into campus antisemitism urges the USCCR to heed the crucial distinction between Jewish ethnic identity and pro-Israel political views
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March 19, 2026
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Read the CJFS Letter to the USCCR concerning the February-March 2026 investigation of campus antisemitism
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BOSTON – CJFS submitted public comment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which held a briefing on Thursday, February 19, 2026, to investigate the increase in antisemitism on America’s college and university campuses. The investigation is examining how institutions of higher education and the federal government responded to allegations of antisemitism on U.S. college and university campuses in violation of federal civil rights protections. The CJFS letter cites the recent rulings by federal judges William Young and Allison Burroughs. Our letter further makes the case that the best protection for the civil rights of Jews on campus is robust protection of the civil rights of all students, and that enforcing a specific version of Jewishness harms Jews on campus.
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We are grateful that the US Commission on Civil Rights has taken up the immensely timely and important issue of antisemitism and its weaponization.
We write on behalf of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff, a membership organization of Jewish scholars and academic staff at more than two dozen colleges and universities in New England. We represent a range of backgrounds and hold diverse views, but we are united in opposing the invocation of Jewish identity or antisemitism to penalize Palestine solidarity activism, to stifle academic freedom, or to otherwise attack inclusionary commitments.
One year ago, federal agents detained several non-citizen students including Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk. In an important September 2025 federal court ruling in AAUP v. Rubio, federal judge William Young found that these detentions proceeded “under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of antisemitism” and violated scholars’ and students’ First Amendment rights. In revoking Öztürk’s student visa, court proceedings revealed, State Department officials had relied on nothing more than a printout from the defamation agency Canary Mission and federal officials’ gut sense that pro-Palestinian speech was presumptively antisemitic.
In a separate September 2025 decision concerning Harvard University’s research funding, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs found that it was “difficult to conclude anything other than that [federal government agencies] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
As you consider this issue, we urge you to heed the testimony you have heard on the crucial distinction between Jewish ethnic identity and pro-Israel political views. Collapsing this distinction will only make antisemitism stronger. In particular:
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Do promote laws and policies consistent with America’s highest ideals and commitments to racial equality, civil rights, and civil liberties. For more detailed guidance, we would direct you to the recommendations contained in this November 2025 Report we produced for the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism and written testimony CJFS members provided to that commission in September 2025;
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Do take steps to combat fascism and authoritarianism in all its forms. This includes decisive support for efforts in Congress to abolish ICE and to protect educators and educational institutions from external coercion. We invite you to refer to the “Not In Our Name” letter signed by 3400 Jewish academics in March 2025 on the threats to higher education.
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Do not allow the vague, self-contradictory, and easily weaponized International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) antisemitism definition to be codified into federal law or regulation. For more detailed guidance, please see CJFS’s recent statement opposing IHRA; the May 2024 Letter signed by over 1,300 Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff Against Antisemitism and this personal and public testimony against the IHRA definition from individual CJFS members.
We are indignant that our Jewish identity has been hijacked to serve malicious or misguided efforts to silence dissenting speech. We are dismayed at the damage already wrought to our universities. And we are horrified by the further outrages this crusade has licensed; as Judge Young pointed out, not even 19th-century Fugitive Slave Act enforcers felt the need to wear masks on the street as Öztürk’s attackers did. But we are hopeful that your Commission will speak simply and clearly about these abuses and help to rein them in.
With gratitude and respect,
Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff​​